{"id":2053,"date":"2021-07-19T17:39:47","date_gmt":"2021-07-19T21:39:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=2053"},"modified":"2021-07-23T12:48:46","modified_gmt":"2021-07-23T16:48:46","slug":"art-tatum-and-the-black-virtuoso-tradition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2021\/07\/art-tatum-and-the-black-virtuoso-tradition.html","title":{"rendered":"Art Tatum and the &#8220;Black Virtuoso Tradition&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/GQ-Ewur6ngI?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>On the heels of his film with Alexander Toradze (my <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2021\/07\/toradzes-piano-stories.html\">previous blog<\/a><\/strong>), Behrouz Jamali has released another remarkable film essay dealing with the art of the piano:&nbsp;<em>The Black Virtuoso<\/em>&nbsp;<em>Tradition<\/em>. It features what the&nbsp;<em>New York Times<\/em>&nbsp;once called \u201cpiano playing at its most awesome\u201d: Steven Mayer playing Art Tatum.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Black Virtuoso Tradition is an American musical phenomenon that I framed decades ago, inspired by Mayer\u2019s eloquent advocacy of such Black piano geniuses as Tatum, James P. Johnson, Jelly Roll Morton, and Fats Waller &#8212;   some of whom didn&#8217;t always write their compositions down.\u00a0Steve \u2013 and only Steve &#8212; has been presenting this music (sometimes transcribed from recordings) as canonized American piano repertoire for decades.\u00a0\u00a0If you add to that such white composers as Gottschalk, Dvorak, Gershwin, Bernstein, and Bolcom, you wind up with one of the signature achievements in American music: piano cameos, many of them highly virtuosic, absorbing Black vernacular strains.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Black Virtuoso Tradition remains virtually invisible for two reasons. The first is that other pianists don\u2019t purvey it. The other is that it combines \u201cpopular\u201d and \u201cclassical\u201d genres. It\u2019s actually therapeutic \u2013 as I remark in Behrouz\u2019s film, \u201cit heals the schism driven like a stake through classical music in America.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The inclusion of Dvorak may surprise. It\u2019s my contention that by 1894 he had become an \u2018American composer\u201d as surely as Domenico Scarlatti, born in Italy, became \u201cSpanish.\u201d The proof in is in the pieces Steve plays: the G-flat and F major Humoresques; the&nbsp;<em>American<\/em>&nbsp;Suite (though it\u2019s not in the film).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You\u2019ll find Behrouz\u2019s film on the website I\u2019m constructing for my forthcoming book&nbsp;<em>Dvorak\u2019s<\/em>&nbsp;<em>Prophecy and the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music<\/em>&nbsp;(which W. W. Norton releases in early November). In tandem with that, Naxos will release six films I\u2019ve produced with the visual artist Peter Bogdanoff, and an Arthur Farwell CD I\u2019ve produced for PostClassical Ensemble. It is all to be found <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/josephhorowitz.com\/content.asp?elemento_id=68\">here<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/josephhorowitz.com\/content.asp?elemento_id=71\">here<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/josephhorowitz.com\/content.asp?elemento_id=70\">here<\/a><\/strong>, and <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/josephhorowitz.com\/content.asp?elemento_id=77\">here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And here\u2019s an index to Behrouz\u2019s film:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>00:00: Kevin Deas narrates pertinent history<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>4:00: Louis Moreau Gottschalk: \u201cThe Banjo\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>8:19: Scott Joplin: \u201cPine Apple Rag\u201d (of Schubertian eloquence)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>11:33: Commentary on Gottschalk and Joplin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>16:13: Joplin: \u201cMaple Leaf Rag\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>18:50: James P. Johnson: \u201cBlueberry Rhyme\u201d (an intoxicating reverie with pearly filigree)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>23:11: Fats Waller: \u201cAin\u2019t Nobody\u2019s Business\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>25:28: Commentary \u2013 ragtime vs. stride piano<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>35:40: Antonin Dvorak: Humoresque in F<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>38:17: Dvorak: Humoresque in G-flat<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>41:35: Art Tatum: Humoresque<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>46:40: Discussion \u2013 Tatum (with a clip of him playing)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>55:00: Tatum: \u201cTiger Rag\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On the heels of his film with Alexander Toradze (my previous blog), Behrouz Jamali has released another remarkable film essay dealing with the art of the piano:&nbsp;The Black Virtuoso&nbsp;Tradition. It features what the&nbsp;New York Times&nbsp;once called \u201cpiano playing at its most awesome\u201d: Steven Mayer playing Art Tatum. The Black Virtuoso Tradition is an American musical [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2053","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-x7","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2053"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2053\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2080,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2053\/revisions\/2080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}